The perfect brain

Post image for The perfect brain

by Katrina on November 2, 2010

Until I had kids, I was pretty happy with my brain. It got good grades in school, held its own in an argument, memorized lines in plays, and the year I lived in Chile, it learned Spanish. It was capable of empathy, which made it easy for me to make friends. It could fall in love, and recover from heartache.

In short, it was a good brain.

The things it didn’t do so well, like sleeping, weren’t such a big deal then. Insomnia became an excuse to stay up late reading. I could always sleep in on the weekend.

Since I’ve had children, I’ve been growing increasingly dissatisfied with my brain. I don’t know how to get it to do all the things I need it to do within the time constraints that come with parenthood.

I’m a very good multitasker, maybe too good. Chronic multitasking often leaves me feeling stupid. With so many details to keep track of, it’s hard to be fully present. Quitting my full time job and going back to freelancing certainly eased the worst of the pressure, but I still have this nagging feeling that I’m missing out on the fun.

Which is why this interview with Katherine Ellison caught my interest as I was taking the kids to school yesterday. It was about an experimental technique called neurofeedback, which trains the brain to focus better. Ellison, who has ADHD, said neurofeedback was more effective for her than meditation, and an alternative to medication. That’s very appealing to me, a lazy meditator (is that an oxymoron?) who has had a bad experience with meds.

This is how neurofeedback works:

People usually sit in a chair facing a laptop screen. The laptop is connected to electrodes applied to the scalp. Special software monitors the electrical activity in your brain…So the computer software looks for desirable brain wave patterns and changes the image on screen to let people know how they are doing.

The image that worked best for Ellison showed a field.

“When my brain responded the way that it was supposed to, the field would burst into color. I’d hear bird song and beautiful flowers would bloom,” she says. “But when I got distracted or when I got a little bit more sped up, the flowers would wilt. It would turn gray, and I’d know that I needed to work a little bit harder.”

At first, people can’t control their brain wave patterns, at least not consciously. But over time, their brains become conditioned to associate certain patterns with pleasant images or sounds—a reward for good behavior. And our brains like rewards.

Obedience training for the brain!

I don’t have ADHD, but I do have a lot of tricks I’d like to teach my brain. If I could, I would teach it to

  • Sleep on command.
  • Take delight in washing dishes, doing laundry, and shuttling kids to and from school and activities.
  • Enjoy the moment more. For example, I would like to revel in a day at the beach without worrying about whether I packed enough diapers, or thinking about how to get the sand out of the kids’ hair, or whether Ruby’s going to get carsick on the way home.
  • Forgive more easily.
  • Feel like working when it’s time to work, playing with the kids when it’s time to play, relaxing when it’s time to relax, having sex when it’s time to have sex, being creative when it’s time to write, and stop checking email so much.
  • Feel satisfied with what I have; stop missing what I don’t have.

What about you? What tricks would you like to teach your brain?

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P.S. Don’t forget to vote today! You can find your polling place here.

{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

KMayer

Just you wait. I’m 46 and I thought I was dumb before??? Boy was I wrong. This peri-menopause is for the birds. Forget wacked periods and sore boobs, my brain is gone!

Reply

Rachel

Being able to sleep on command would be priceless!

I would like to be able to tell my brain which facts to remember and which to forget. For instance, yesterday I needed to remember what books I wanted to check out from the library. And I will never, ever need to know every word to the song “California Girls.” Instead, I had no idea what books I wanted and couldn’t get “California Girls” out of my head!

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Katrina

@KMayer I can only imagine what menopause is going to do to me.

@Rachel Yes, precisely! Like, do I really need to know all the words to “Each Peach Pear Plum”? Do I really need to know about every type of silly band they make, and where to get them? If I could clear off that shelf in my brain, maybe I could remember what I read about the Oakland mayor race when I’m sitting down to fill out my ballot…

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Stefanie

Perhaps single-tasking, rather than multi-tasking, is a way to like our brains better (and be kinder to our brains). Not that I can say I’m anywhere near a poster child for single-tasking, but the article at the link below did intrigue me….and, I’ve seen some of the benefits of simple things like turning off my e-mail pop-up alert at work so I can focus on the task at hand instead of getting distracted every time a new e-mail arrives.

http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/05/how-and-why-to-stop-multitaski.html

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Katrina

Great link, Stefanie. “Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we’re getting more done. In reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%.”

In my experience, life with kids requires a certain amount of multitasking. But the problem is, some multitasking leads to more multitasking and the end result = might as well be stoned.

Reply

Jennifer

heh. As a mother, I feel stoned about 30% of the time.

Reply

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